Why One Fashion Writer Always Sweats the Sleazy Guy

I swoon for their louche, sweaty style. I’m enamored with the singer Pitbull, and his Havana shirts and tight, white trousers. I unironically praise velour tracksuits. I have a crush on DJ Khaled, with his man jewelry and smoking robes. I blush at sharply edged facial hair. I am hypnotized by heinous, shiny dress shoes that are paired with faded jeans. When the cab driver who dropped me off to work this morning flashed me a smile, revealing a gold canine tooth, I felt something close to infatuation. My heart regularly skips a beat at a good turtleneck and sport jacket ensemble; Extra points for a thin gold chain strung around the neck.

I'm not sure how or why this happened, I just know the reactions that come along with it. My coworkers make gagging faces and roll their eyes, friends pray for me, and though my mother likes Don Johnson in Miami Vice from time to time, she openly cringes at my (many) admissions. But I have long held a candle for this type of man, and barring chemical interference or a lobotomy, that’s not going to change any time soon. So I figured I’d better try to understand it. And here’s what I found: There is something strangely alluring about a man with unforgivable style. These men are the ones to shirk trends in lieu of their own seedy look, however deeply dated. They proudly perspire in Bee Gees–era pastel button-ups, time-warped and stinking of cologne in Huckapoo shirts, or wafting of stale cigarettes below their Kangol newsboy caps. There’s no adherence here to the oversize hoodies of Vetements, nary a Supreme tee in sight, and neither Yeezy or Brioni fits into their closet vocabulary. For these men, there is no need to skew toward mass trends or consistent classics, no interest in copping the latest It piece. Instead, they find luxury as well as self-satisfying comfort in their own sleazy selves, their utter lack of irony, and their absolute confidence.

Gosha Rubchinskiy Spring 2017

Photo: Umberto Fratini / Indigtal.tv

And as I thought about it, increasingly, I find myself less alone when it comes to ick-tastic men (and their ensembles). It seems that my fetish has become widely fetishized: Slime style has become an embraced aesthetic on the runways. The tracksuit—a look once designated for the quick-rich, crude Russian thugs of the early ’90s—has been going strong for several seasons now, with haute incarnations from Chloé to Loewe and Gucci. The street style favorite of Mens Spring 2017 was the Hawaiian shirt, aka the signature uniform of dirtbags. Look to cinema for proof! Both Nicholas Cage’s character in Raising Arizona (a convenience-store robber with a grotesque mustache and a thick swath of chest hair) and Al Pacino as Tony Montana in Scarface (a machine gun–toting Miami drug lord) wore their sweat-drenched, hibiscus print shirts with gross pride. My most swooned-over moment this season happened at Gosha Rubchinskiy, when a buzz-cut model stepped out with a fat shouldered, purposely ill-fitting suit and white sneakers, looking every inch a Slavic version of Daredevil’s Kingpin, or maybe a significantly slimmer Tony Soprano. Even a few of my coworkers have been getting in on the action: for her part, Vogue.com Market Editor Kelly Connor claims to be personally very fond of the ickiest accessory of the season. “I’ve spotted a lot of perv sunglasses, the yellow tinted type!” she told me, referencing the recent influx of the creepy uncle shades the past few seasons at Gucci, as well as her own Ray Ban version. She pairs hers with—what else?—a Hawaiian shirt.

Al Pacino in Scarface

Photo: Universal / Courtesy of Everett Collection

The deliciously lecherous aesthetic has also been seeping onto the streets. Ben Cobb, the editor of Another Man, has become a common subject for Vogue.com’s street style photographer Phil Oh. Cobb, whose lacquered-looking waves and caterpillar mustache might make him a dead ringer for Billy Crudup in Almost Famous, is consistently captured in a bevy of retro-minded looks that are heavy on the sleaze factor, even if they were occasionally by way of Dries Van Noten. (The styling clinch? Cobb often buttoned his shirts well below the breast bone for full, unabashed chest exposure.) So, from the runway to the street, there’s plenty of evidence that sleazy style is making a comeback. I don’t anticipate receiving any less scorn for being so very into it. But who cares? Somewhere out there, my prince awaits me. Let me know if you see him—chances are he’s in a Nylon blend.